Looking for a defined palm-mute sound

[dschwartz]

all you need is to use some high gain pedal and cut the bass before it and a nice mid scoop afer it..

try a dr boogey with lower 1st coupling cap and you´ll see..

[Fender56]

You can try also the Krank Distortus Maximus. It is quite simple to DIY (schematics & video in the members section)

[mnordbye]

Thanks for all the suggestions! I'll definately try the EQing and such. And! I totally forgot about the BSIAB2. I can imagine putting a booster or maybe the Dist + before it would get close to what i want..

Great soundclip Tcio! loved the tone of that omega smash drive.

Magnus Nordbye

[sfr]

Not my thing, but our drummer is a fan of old Metallica, Megadeth, and such.  When we're fooling around at practice, I find the Mr. EQ (from the Runoffgroove/Homewrecker site) is a great tool for getting that sound with a rig that's not even really designed for it.

[Meanderthal]

You might want to give the Roland Bee Baa a try. I still can't figure out why it's called a fuzz, it's a distortion to me.

You want to cut some of the bottom end(hence the rangemaster) to get rid of the mud. Try lowering the value of the input cap of whatever is already closest to what you're looking for. Less is more. 

[Meanderthal]

One other tip- switch clipping diodes to red LEDs.

[earthtonesaudio]

+1 on the string gauge, especially when down-tuning. 
If you use light gauge strings and tune low, your strings flop around: instant mush.  Also, the shorter the neck scale, the heavier strings you'll need to maintain correct tension.  My guitar is 24.75" scale length, and I used to tune to C# with my old metal band... consequently I had to up the string gauge. 
I tried up to 13-62 gauge (I think), but at that point the strings are so heavy you start to lose attack again, and I found 12-56 gauge to work best.

[tcio]

all you need is to use some high gain pedal and cut the bass before it and a nice mid scoop afer it..

I couldn't agree more! Once I started running things this way I never went back to anything else. I go for the best punchy crunchy tone I can get, getting rid of any whatsoever type of muddy bass I am getting.  Then I run an EQ afterwards scooping the mids and tweaking the highs and bring the lows back to the desired sound I'm after. This way all (or most) of your lows are after your distortion which results to a much tighter yet still large bass response/tone great for palm muting.

[tcio]

I couldn't agree more! Once I started running things this way I never went back to anything else. I go for the best punchy crunchy tone I can get, getting rid of any whatsoever type of muddy bass I am getting.  Then I run an EQ afterwards scooping the mids and tweaking the highs and bring the lows back to the desired sound I'm after. This way all (or most) of your lows are after your distortion which results to a much tighter yet still large bass response/tone great for palm muting.

Sorry I should have added this and you may already know. Unless you are running through a super clean preamp I would run that EQ in the FX loop of your amp if it has one or if you are using an attenuator of any kind the EQ will be even more effective running it after that rather than in the FX loop. All amps vary as you know as do FX loops so I would try each possible configuration that applies to your setup and see what works best.

Sometimes you can get the sound you want just by re-adjusting the tone controls on the amp itself but I myself have never been satisfied with that alone so I tweak those plus an EQ. It took me years to figure it out that a lot of the mud I was getting was from having the "Bass" control knob on my amp up too high but it was the only way to get bottom end at the time until one day I threw an EQ in the FX loop. The goal (or what works for me) is to get most of your bottom end/bass after all of any distortion stages (pedals, preamp, etc.) and not before. Good Luck